VAN DOORN: The DMV is listening maybe

Now here's a problem that reaches directly into our lives
without too much complication. We can strike out at it, maybe even
get something done about it, unlike dealing, say, with the economy
and its heart-breaking offspring ---- layoffs, unemployment,
foreclosures, homelessness, health care.

Or dealing with bad schools, permanent warfare and uncivil
speech. There are more; don't get me started.

Against this list, the one problem we can see, touch and plead
with is the Department of Motor Vehicles and one of its newer
tribulations: renewing driver's licenses. As problems go, this is a
snap. Also, it's painfully local, which makes the blood race
through familiar byways.

Thanks to Edward Sifuentes, the tireless digger-writer for the
NCT, we learned this week that the DMV is having an awful time with
license renewals because of technology. The company it hired to
produce super-safe, practically uncopyable licenses, is bogged
down.

Consequently, tens of thousands of renewals are late in getting
to the drivers ---- if they get to them at all.

The drivers have filled out every piece of paper that is
required. They have sent the usual usurious sums of money. And then
they have waited. And received nothing.

It is fairly clear, then, that the overmatched tech firm that
sold the state on the new technology cannot keep up with its own
invention; it is at sea, as it were, when left to its own
devices.

(This information comes with the requisite "allegeds,"
"reportedlys" and "according tos." But the DMV admits it; that
should be enough.) Easy, right? Call up the department near you.
Beg, plead. Demand to know wassup, that the state produce what is
yours, the license. Not so much for driving, although that's
important, but to show to every mercantile establishment in San
Diego that you are who you say you are.

In other words, with license in hand, you have the tool to fend
off life's consuming fear, the loss of identity. Where has all our
history gone? is a frequent question. Where is the thread, the
tapestry of our very lives? Who has not said in the dead of night,
"Who am I?" A driver's license has the answer, plus a recent photo.
Technology will one day be the end of us. In the meantime, drivers
must have these licenses. Get thee in gear, DMV.

Fear of Bureaucracy, or Bureauphobia, is a common but
little-understood malady.

If you are suffering with it as you try to get your driver's
license, don't bend. Be calm, civil, and even-tempered. Above all,
be strong.

John Van Doorn is a freelance editor and writer. Contact him at
jc.vandoorn@gmail.com.